Twitter Transparency Report: Government Requests On The Rise

Last week, Twitter released the latest version of its transparency report. The report gives the public insight into the number of requests that Twitter receives from governments and copyright holders – and the second half of 2013 saw a surge in the number of requests.

The transparency report is divided into account information requests from governments, content removal requests from governments, and DMCA takedown and copyright notices. Across the board, Twitter saw an increase in requests.

Twitter notes that account information requests are usually in relation to criminal investigations, and that a total of 46 countries (10 more than the last report) have sent requests.

Compared to six months ago, Twitter has seen a jump in requests by 22 percent, which the company hypothesizes may be due to its increased international exposure.

59 percent of government requests for account information came from the United States, which dwarfed the second-most active country, Japan, with 15 percent.

The second type of requests Twitter receives are removal requests from governments to take down content posted to the network.

The number of requests jumped from 60 in the period from January to June 2013 to a massive 365 this period – an increase of more than five times.

The majority of requests came from France, followed by Russia, Brazil and the UK.

Lastly, Twitter receives copyright infringement notices. Twitter has seen an increase of 16 percent in takedown notices since the previous reporting period.